As my mother's daughter, I love gardening. Today's my mom's birthday, so I must brag on her. She is a wonderful gardener. She has an eye for what will be beautiful, plans ahead to make flower beds right, and her yard always looks amazing.

Last year about this time, my mom and I redid a large part of my backyard garden. Our house is in an older neighborhood and we have like 8 huge oak trees in the back yard. The people here before us did a great job on the gardens so for the first 2 years we lived in the house, we did our best to maintain! There are a ton of beautiful large leaf hydrangeas, mature bushes, perennials popping up everywhere...it is a beautiful yard...it's a big part of why we bought the house!

One part of the yard had kinda become a drainage area, so mom and I set about changing that. We built a huge 8x8 raised flower bed box, and installed some galvanized tin watering troughs for a few more raised beds.

It was quite a project....especially with me being 6 months pregnant! Ok, ok, mom did most of the work...

Last year the boxes were pretty...this year it's just beautiful! The perennias that we planted last year have come back and look gorgeous, and I planted some annuals that are so bright and cheery! I love to have fresh herbs around, so I added cilantro, basil, thyme, curry, and Italian parsley to the evergreen rosemary, perennials oregano and lemon balm. I also planted a tomato plant, a strawberry bush, and a hot pepper plant. Now, if you remember, last year, I had a tomato...a lone tomato that met an early end...what I didn't blog about was that one day, I went to check on my lone tomato and it had been snatched by a squirrel! If that happens again, squirrel and I will have words.

And over the last few days, as I peruse the garden, I've noticed these